This invention relates to the slicing of food products as, for example, in restaurant and delicatessen operations and, more particularly, to the automatic slicing apparatus useful in such operations.
The making of sandwiches in restaurants and delicatessens often requires the slicing of a food product into an integral number of slices which are then used to make the sandwich. Operators of such establishments seek to establish uniformity in the sizes of the individual portions incorporated in their sandwiches and this has heretofore posed a difficult problem. The automatic slicing machines operate rapidly and efficiently to slice the food product, but the operator has no means of accurately and automatically ascertaining the weight of the portions produced and, accordingly, can only estimate the total weight of the product that he cuts. It is time consuming for the operator to check his estimate by weighing the slices. Furthermore, if he finds that he is over the desired weight, oftentimes there is nothing he can do with the extra slice or slices except to include them in the sandwich.
It is accordingly the primary purpose of the present invention to provide apparatus for automatically controlling the weight of individually sized portions of sliced food products prepared by an automatic slicing machine. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such apparatus that will accurately determine an individually sized portion of a food product having a desired preselected weight.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide such apparatus that will avoid the necessity for the operator of an automatic slicing machine periodically to check his estimate of the correct weight for a preselected individually sized portion of a sliced food product.